Question: [unintelligible] were there any concerns that were raised by
the Africans, and
is it correct to say that you are pushing for a African-American
[unintelligible]?

USTR Zoellick: Well certainly there were concerns raised, I mean that’s
the nature of
the discussion. So whether it be capacity building, we had a good
discussion on TRIPS
and medicine. And one of the problems we run into, is that, you know for
a number of
African capitals, they get their information about this from NGO’s, and
NGO’s
sometimes don’t represent our position carefully. And so I had a number
of African
Ministers come up and say “we’re really pleased to understand what you
are trying to
do.” Because I was pointing out that the problem that we saw on that
issue was that,
more and more countries wanted to have the ability to import from third
countries, which
was what this was about, including countries that have very strong
pharmaceutical
industries. And so you expand it, the set of countries that were
supposed to use this
special privilege, to about 120. And then some countries wanted to
expand the scope of
disease. So if you take what’s supposed to be an exception for special
circumstance,
expand it to almost every country except the OECD countries, and then
you expand it to
every disease, you’ve kind of blown a hole in the whole intellectual
property regime.
And for example, Minister Malie of Lesotho, said that’s certainly not
their intention,
because they understand the role of intellectual property.